Bolt The Doors

`The Guys Next Door` Could Ruin The Neighborhood

August 27, 1990|By Rick Kogan, TV/radio critic.

I`m no kid, but I know kids and there is no kid I know who is childish enough to be attracted to the kids who are ``The Guys Next Door.``

This new entry in NBC`s Saturday morning lineup is premiering in prime time, at 7:30 p.m. Monday on WMAQ-Ch. 5. What a blunder, for this timeslot will attract a number of potentially dangerous viewers: parents who have allowed their children to run generally unsupervised through the playground of Saturday morning television.

Most parents will react to this program as if learning that a son`s new playmates were Hell`s Angels and a daughter was dating Andrew Dice Clay.

``The Guys Next Door`` are from a creatively impoverished neigborhood-a direct result (i.e. ripoff) of the New Kids on the Block, with an evolutionary bow to the Monkees.

The format, filled with all sorts of au courant video vamping, includes a segment called Fashion Police, which makes mean-spirited fun of fat people;

parodies of commercials; weak comedic sketches; and, most prominently, music videos that are part of a mass-marketing effort that includes the release of a ``The Guys Next Door`` album.

The ``Guys`` are pretty: hunks with hairdos. Their names are Patrick J. Dancy, Eddie Garcia, Bobby Leslie, Damon Sharpe and Chris Wolf. Through no fault of their own, they are the sort of role models who will feed the inferiority complexes of teenage boys.

``The Guys Next Door`` make the New Kids on the Block look like the Rolling Stones and the Monkees look like the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Still, these guys could become teen heartthrobs. H.L. Mencken was right when he said, ``No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people.`` And he wasn`t even talking about impressionable kids.

`THE LOS ALTOS STORY`

7 p.m. Monday, FNN

Los Altos sits in Silicon Valley close to San Jose in California. It has a population of about 27,000 and many houses sell for $600,000. To its residents, AIDS was something that happened ``to someone else in some other place.``

But when it did happen in Los Altos, it arrived with a sledgehammer`s force, altering the consciousness and lives of many townspeople and resulting in one of the most powerful documentaries I`ve ever seen.

When Steve Angius told his family of his disease, they responded with love, moving him into the home, where they cared for him. As well, the father, Dushan, then president-elect of the local Rotary, initiated an AIDS task force among the organization`s membership to lay the groundwork for an AIDS awareness campaign.

It is remarkable that the networks and other cable outlets took a pass on this program and a credit to Financial News Network that it did not. The Los Altos Rotary Club produced ``The Los Altos Story,`` in association with Gregory Hoblit, one of the creative forces behind ``Hill Street Blues`` and

``L.A. Law.`` It was written and directed by former NBC correspondent Robin Young.

In a bit of tragic fortuitousness, on the first day that the documentary cameras began filming, Steve had to be rushed to the hospital. The cameras kept rolling, capturing the family`s anguish as Steve`s wasted body was taken by stretcher to the ambulance that took him to the hospital where, later that very day, he died.

This tragic event is the centerpiece to a story of one family`s bravely forthright response to the disease and one community coming to grips with AIDS.

Even after Steve`s memorial service, for which the dying man had made a videotape ``goodbye,`` many Rotary members questioned the necessity of the AIDS awareness campaign, even though the young president of another chapter had tested HIV-positive.

Questioned, that is, until the night that Walter Singer, one of the most respected members of the community and a man who played Santa Claus at the city`s annual Christmas party, addressed a meeting and announced that he was HIV-positive, the result of a blood transfusion years before.

This on-camera admission pierces the hearts of those in attendance, shocking them out of their it-will-never-happen-to-people-like-us complacency. It is a remarkable moment.

``The Los Altos Story`` will be followed by a special 30-minute FNN

``Focus,`` a call-in show that will feature as guests Young, Angius and Dr. Mathilde Krim, founder of the American Foundation for AIDS Research.

Steve Angius` death has proven a catalyst for awareness and compassion in one community. It has resulted in a documentary of tears and hope, a remarkable document that should deeply touch anyone who watches it.

`THE OPRAH WINFREY SHOW`

9 a.m. Wednesday, WLS

When Winfrey exercises her social responsibility, the result is often compelling, valuable television. In this case, she tackles the matter of AIDS and teenagers with admirable tact, overseeing a program that is enlightening, sad and of undeniable public service.

Listening to Ali Gertz-an uintelligent and articulate young woman-tell how a one-night encounter seven years ago resulted in her contracting the deadly disease is to be aware that AIDS is a truly democratic affliction; it can strike anyone. As she begins detailing the course of the illness, one is given a greater understanding of AIDS` insidious touch.

Winfrey wisely keeps the tone away from self-pity. And because of Gertz`s bravely buoyant manner, one is terribly moved by this show. Another victim joins the conversation and an expert on the subject. In front of an audience made up mostly of teens, this edition of the popular morning program transcends its genre and becomes essential viewing.